Concordia University engineering student Anthony Boulos describes how obtaining an OPUS transit pass just became easier for Concordia students thanks to an initiative he headed to get the university to share student information electronically with the STM. Boulos was in the Guy/Concordia metro station in Montreal Thursday August 27, 2015.

Anthony Boulos, 21, was frustrated that it took so long for him to get his Opus card. He figured there must be a better way.

Now, thanks to one email to the STM, and lots of persistence, it’s easier for most Concordia students to get their reduced-fare transit passes.

As of Aug. 17, Concordia students under the age of 26 with valid Quebec addresses can purchase their discounted fare cards on the university’s website. Concordia sends proof of residency, eligibility, a birth date and a photo to the Société de transport de Montréal. The students get their cards in the mail a few days later.

Boulos, an Île Bizard resident, said the old process is antiquated and less secure: students must get a letter from their school, show that letter to an STM employee, who takes a photo and issues the pass. Boulos said the waiting time at the Berri-UQAM station to get a pass is hours long.

So Boulos, an industrial engineering student, decided to fill out a form on the STM’s website suggesting that the system be automated. He got a follow-up email from a director with the STM, who requested a meeting to discuss the project.

Boulos was told if Concordia was on board, the STM would be happy to take part in the project.

So began many rounds of meetings with the administrators, legal teams and engineers from both organizations.

“The main difficulty setting this up was not the technology, it was getting everyone in the room together,” Boulos said. “I have been working on this since January, 2014. I had at least 10 meetings (with both the STM and Concordia).”

But 19 months of work paid off, quite literally for Boulos, as he was hired by Concordia to work as a project designer and coordinator. He estimates he worked about 30 hours on the project.

Anthony Boulos, a Concordia University engineering student headed a project to get Concordia to electronically provide the STM with student information in order to make the issuing of an OPUS card easier.

The system came online just in time for Boulos’s last year of studies, so he’ll be able to purchase his last student Opus pass using the system he designed.

Boulos said he’s proud of his initiative, and despite the long period getting both organizations to work together, he’s impressed with how the project came together.

“It’s impressive that a director of the STM actually answered me when I filled out that form on the website,” Boulos said.

He said what seems like a relatively easy system to set up is quite difficult when you take into account the privacy implications and concerns about fraud.

He said the new system is actually much safer than the old one, because the student portal is accessible just to one student, and the information is sent electronically by Concordia to the STM, which means it can’t be altered.

Julie Clouâtre, a division chief in charge of customer service with the STM, said the initiative is now a pilot project that the STM will try until January. If all goes well, it can be extended to willing CEGEPs and universities, possibly as early as the 2016 school year.

The STM had tried in the past to get such a program off the ground, but the institutions were concerned about the privacy implications of sending out personal information.

“When Anthony approached us, it was the piece we were missing, because schools needed to go and get permission from students to send out this information,” Clouâtre said. “In this case, it was a student that approached the university to ask for this.”

She added if the project is extended, it would save the STM time and money, as the agency issues 170,000 student cards every year. It also has teams travel to 150 schools to produce about half of the reduced-fare cards on site.

Marc Denoncourt, Concordia’s chief information officer, said Concordia’s web development team also worked on the project. He said it took a full-time developer about 10 weeks to develop the application’s “back-end,” which included security protocols.

“But it was (Anthony’s) concept, and students were part of the design all the way,” Denoncourt said.

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